Music > Interviews

Clean Bandit

02/10/14

Clean Bandit! Their name may mean dirty bastard but they are certainly not. What they are are very clever and talented musicians who have combined their skills to create what may be the first ever electronic chamber group. Meeting at Cambridge Uni back in 2009, they've just been touring the states, chatting with Pharrell and generally living the hight life. They're playing UEA later this month, so let's find out more about them from Neil, the string player..

Your music has been described as a fusion between electronica, classical and deep house. Also as a pop band. How would YOU describe it?

Electronic Chamber Music! We’ve always found it pretty tough to condense down what we do into a short phrase, but I think this best sums it up.

Where does your band name come from?

A Russian friend of Grace’s used to call her a Clean Bandit in Russian and we thought the translation was funny so it stuck (literal translation is dirty bastard!). Grace and Jack spent a year in Russia, where a lot of Clean Bandit’s early tracks were written. If you give our video Mozart’s House a watch, you can see what they did with their year in Moscow! Our friend Love Ssega went out to visit Jack and they recorded the video for MH during his trip.

You’re played with the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester in September. Can you tell me more about that?

It was amazing. It was incredible having the huge power and potential of the full orchestra at our disposal, and it was an awesome thing to be given that opportunity. Obviously we’re huge fans of putting classical music and contemporary dance music together, but to do it on such a huge scale was so exciting for us. It was also brilliant to gather together all our guest vocalists under one roof – with so many of them touring themselves, or working on their own records (such as Rae Morris, Jess Glynne and Eliza Shaddad) it was really fun to all get together for one show. Hopefully everyone else appreciated it as much as we did.

You have had several guest singers, and tour singers. Do you feel you’re still searching for one full time lead singer?

No. Having freedom to work with different vocalists on every track gives us so much scope to experiment with our sound that I don’t think we’d want to settle for just one voice at the moment. We’re lucky to work with a wide range of talented vocals, and since our tracks differ so much from one to another we just didn’t think it would make sense to limit ourselves to one voice. Our tour singers Elisabeth Troy and Florence Rawlings are amazingly talented, so we never feel like the songs suffer without the recorded voices on tour with us. Any chance to team up with Jess, Rae, Love Ssega etc is always special – we managed to team up with many of them across festivals this summer, which has been the best fun. We feel very lucky to work with such talented people.

Who else do you dream of working with? You must’ve met some interesting fellow musicians…do you feel confident in approaching potential collaborators?

It’s got to the point where we’ve got absolutely no shame on that front! Grace approached Pharrell at a recent show – not promising anything, but watch this space!

How was it being on Later with Jools Holland?

Huge. It felt like a real milestone for us, especially since it was around the release of our album. Playing on Jools is such an honour, since so many amazing musicians have performed on his show in the past. We’ve since played on Good Morning America, and quite a few big shows in Europe, but I think personally nothing will compare to playing on Later…

What’s the reaction been like to New Eyes?

The reaction has been great! It’s been so different playing festivals this summer compared to last year, since people know a lot more of our tracks due to the album. It’s such a summery record, so it felt brilliant to see everyone partying with us at festivals all summer.  

You seem to be touring almost non stop until the end of the year all over the world; where in particular are you looking forward to visiting?

My home for Christmas! We’ve spent such a huge amount of time on the road this year, so any chance I get to spend with my friends/family is very special. I miss my bed!

I really like the design of your album cover, and also the cool t-shirts you have for sale. How did these designs develop?

The four shapes were originally blueprints for four electric string instruments that we never got round to making. They’ve been with us right from the beginning, so there was no way we couldn’t include them on our album cover. The album cover itself was shot in the Barbican in London, where we shot parts of our video for A&E – it felt great to go back there for around album, since A&E was released just after we signed to our label and it felt like a full circle for us.

Rather Be has been a massive hit for you. How did you meet Jess Glynne?

We met her on chat roulette and thought she had an amazing voice. Other voices we’ve worked with we’ve been lucky enough to find through working in a studio in Kilburn, which gives free spaces to creative types. We still record there, even though it’s a tiny little box room!

With so many styles of music coming together in Clean Bandit, who influences your music? Who have you been listening to recently on your tour bus?

 Jessie Ware, SBTRKT and Jungle. I’m so excited for Jessie Ware’s album – the tracks I’ve heard from it are so incredibly beautiful. She’s definitely someone we’d love to work with! In terms of musical influences, we all listen to so many different types of music – I guess that’s why our album has such a wide range of genres within it!

I know two of you are brothers and Jack and Grace are/were a couple. Does this ever cause any problems with tiffs, etc?

One of our good friends is called Tiff, and we’ve never had any problems with him! Being serious though, living on the road with a big group of people will always throw up its problems here and there. We’re lucky that we never have any big issues with each other – we decided to start Clean Bandit because we got on so well together and had so many things in common and that’s stuck with us over the years.

What can we expect from your show in Norwich in October? Have you been to Norwich before?

We played at Sundown Festival recently as the sun was setting and it was a pretty perfect end to our summer. The crowd was in to it as much as we were, so it was a great moment!

Clean Bandit play UEA on October 20th. Tickets available from ueaticketbookings.co.uk.